Condé Nast announced Wednesday that Peter Kaplan — the former editor of the New York Observer and current Condé Nast Traveler creative director who inspired a pair of recently unmasked fake Twitter accounts — will be the next editorial director of its Fairchild Fashion Group.
Kaplan will take the reins from Fairchild’s current editorial director, Patrick McCarthy, on August 2. He’ll report to Gina Sanders and oversee WWD, WWD.com, Footwear News, Menswear, as well as Fairchild’s tradeshow and book publishing businesses.
McCarthy will remain chairman until the end of the year when he plans to leave the company.
It's a bit of an odd choice. In an interview with the Observer, Kaplan himself admitted he's "a media guy, not a fashion guy."
Kaplan was the editor of the Observer between 1994 and 2009 – some of which was considered the golden age of the salmon-colored weekly. He was ousted after Jared Kushner soon after bought the paper.
Here’s Kaplan’s statement on the appointment: “I am honored to join Fairchild – the great global voice of fashion, retail, style and media reporting – as WWD celebrates its 100th birthday and turns its amazing heritage to the digital age. I'm really looking forward to working with WWD's editor-in-chief Ed Nardoza and the editorial teams in making the second Fairchild century as full of journalistic pop as its first."
